Blogging the democratic revolution
6.4% GDP Diversified economy 3.1% inflation 17% stronger peso Tax cuts Pensions Competitive advantage $3 billion budge surplus equal to 3% of GDP Revolution iVIVA CHILE!
We’ve discussed Belarus quite a bit over the past few days, including an item showing that Congress approved $24 million of funding for opposition parties in the countries. Now, it seems as if the EU has finally moved beyond “stern condemnations” to real action, by getting ready to set aside funds for similar measures that the U.S. is taking. THE European Union is set to provide cash for opposition parties in the former Soviet republic of Belarus. EU diplomats are considering direct funding to allow Belarus’s opposition parties to compete with the pro-government campaign. If approved, it would mark a…
El Universal’s Roberto Giusti has an insightful interview with a top pollster in Venezuela who’s found that President Hugo Chavez is rapidly sliding in the popular approval polls. Among many reasons, he’s found that poor people can only be bought off with ‘social programs’ for so long. Chavez also has dropped in a relatively short period of time, to 45% support, partly because most of his programs have not panned out to expectations (e.g., 400,000 Chavez ‘scholarships’ were dangled before the poor, but only 78 were forked out). And about a third of that popular support is purely for practical…
With news of the draft constitution circling the streets, women aren’t all that happy knowing that legislation will be based on sharia and certain rights won’t be given. So what do they do about it? Make their views known by exercising their right to assembly! This was the first civil rights protest held by women’s groups in the holy city of Najaf. It was reported by Radio Free Iraq, but this is the only account I could find of it on Google News (now that’s pathetic!). Women representing 17 civil society groups took the streets of Najaf on Aug. 3.…
The consensus, left and right, is that Colombia is an good place. And it’s getting better. And better. Colombia is in fact a bright rising star. And for all the criticism I read, left and right (but mostly left), on Plan Colombia, it doesn’t really get at what is going on in Colombia. It’s called revolution. Life is growing tolerable and free and even pleasant and desirable in Colombia. Just check out the word from the Lonely Planet bulletin boards. Poverty is falling. GDP is up. Wages are up. Trade is up. Jobs are up. Safety is up. The currency…
Election day is tomorrow in Venezuela. It’s more awful than anyone realizes. Not only are the results stacked and foreordained, the electronic evidence one leaves at the ballot box is easily traced to the individual voters, effectively nullifying secret ballot. What will follow will be retribution for dissidents. No one will be permitted to dissent in secret. Anymore. In the end, Venezuela will get Saddamite and Albanian and Castro style “democracy” where 99.99% of the votes go to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. That wrenching knowledge is fully on the minds of Venezuelans as they decide whether to vote or abstain…
Eurasia Daily Monitor has a very in depth article concerning the parliamentary and government rivalries going on in Ukraine. In particular, PM Tymoshenko wants President Yushchenko to break with parliamentary speaker Lytvyn and put together a parliamentary majority so that they can finally get WTO legislation passed. In this case, the problem is in the pudding, and the current make up of parliament isn’t very favorable to that happening. The first demand is that Tymoshenko remains prime minister until the 2006 election. The second demand is to exclude Lytvyn’s NPU from the 2006 election coalition (see EDM, August 3). In…
As most House spending bills do, this one almost slipped under the radar. They just approved $24 million dollars to fund democracy in Belarus. The U.S. House of Representatives voted late Wednesday to earmark $24 million for promoting democracy, development of political parties and independent media in Belarus over the next two years, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported. The bill on financing the U.S. foreign policy in the years 2006-2007 was passed by 351 vs 78 votes, the House of Representatives Secretariat reported. In particular, the document authorizes the U.S. government to spend $24 million on assistance in building democracy…
The new terrorist president of Iran will have to give an address to the United Nations soon. The Bush administration is thinking of preventing that from happening. The Bush administration is considering taking the unprecedented step of preventing a visting head of state from addressing the United Nations in New York by denying a visa to Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Iran’s new elected conservative president. Officials said a decision rested on investigations into whether Mr Ahmadi-Nejad was involved in the 1979 US embassy hostage crisis and the killing of an Iranian-Kurdish dissident leader in Vienna in 1989. Iran denies his involvement in…
I’m watching this very closely, because it’s so interesting and complex a situation. Seventeen soldiers stage a coup while President Taya is out of the country, people rejoice in the streets, and everything goes back to normal. There’s more to it than that, but the normalcy is what makes it such an interesting case. The new military junta did make some maneuvers, however. Noukchott – The army officers who seized power in Mauritania moved to strengthen their hold on the arid northwest African country on Thursday, dissolving parliament but keeping the ministers of deposed leader Maaouiya Ould Taya at their…
The leader of the Yeni Fikr youth movement has been arrested by authorities, who are claiming that he took money from Armenian special intelligence in order to prepare a revolution in Azerbaijan through a plot hatched by the United States NDI. Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor-General’s Office announced on 4 August the arrest of Ruslan Bashirli, leader of the opposition youth movement Yeni Fikir (New Thinking), on charges of plotting to overthrow the Azerbaijani leadership at the instigation of Armenian intelligence operatives. Those allegations, which the Armenian National Security Service and Bashirli’s fellow Azerbaijani oppositionists have both rejected, highlight Azerbaijan’s ongoing suspicion and…
Meanwhile, down at the Crawford Ranch… Source: Associated Press …too bad I don’t have a good horsy picture with ten-gallon hats, but a pickup-truck picture will do. Venezuela’s dictator can only wonder what his next door neighbor is laughing about with President Bush right here – because it’s almost certain Chavez’s name got brought up at some point. Probably with a lot of ridicule too. Hey Hugo – they’re laughing at you!
Miguel has first details of the broadcastings of the TeleChavez network. It’s totally weird. BLECCCCHHHHHH!!!!!!
Earlier this morning Robert posted an entry on some Poles in Belarus who happen to be rock music lovers using their passion to protest against the government, based on a Radio Liberty report from yesterday (Aug. 3, see Rock Against the Regime!). Whether this was related to today’s crackdown or not, Le Monde is reporting that Belarusian police have arrested the Vice-President of the Polish Association of Belarus, Wieslaw Kiewliak, along with an aid. According to Le Monde, this is the sixth member of the organization that the government has arrested this week. The article notes the context; Poland is…
Here’s a small item that looks like real news – Nick Burns, the number three guy at State, insists that the Andean Free Trade Agreement (this is CAFTA, but for Andean states like Colombia, Ecuador and Peru) is advancing nicely. News sources have repeatedly said that the bloody and terrible Congressional battle to pass CAFTA probably made the Bush administration too demoralized to try to pass more free trade agreements for the foreseeable future. But I am not so sure about that. Maybe, as Burns’ statements suggest, the Bush administration is instead emboldened by CAFTA’s success. And it will grow…
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, a vile Maoist terror group enamored of Pol Pot terrorized the Peruvian countryside. They were communists known as the Shining Path and along with their ugly cousin known as Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), they specialized in murder. Being cowards, they didn’t just go after ‘oligarchs’ (whom they never seemed to find) but unarmed community organizers and civil society advocates, the people who wanted to spread the world democracy revolution by peaceful means. They especially went after those. In the face of these remorseless, psychopathic Marxist death squads, Peruvians organized themselves into curious collectives,…
Amid growing signs of discontent in Cuba now, George Moneo at Babalu blog proposes a new meme for Cubans on the island, to remind them and reinforce them that the vile Castro regime is over and it’s time for the birth of freedom. His words, which he urges Cubans to utter, write, engrave, graffiti and use are: ‘Ya No Mas,’ meaning “No More Already.” Simple, efficient and likely to catch on, watch for these revolutionary words as the decaying pillars of the Castro regime come tumbling down.
Is there anything harder than picking yourself up to vote in an election you know won’t win? Such is the question confronting Venezuelans this weekend. In the States, those of us who are blue voters who live in red states, and red voters who live in blue cities know what this is like. But it does not stop us. How much harder it is, though, when one knows the system is RIGGED with signs of fraud. It’s hard to lose, but it’s even harder to lose when one really wins. That is what Venezuelans are confronted with. They say vote…
As the ongoing feud between the Polish and Belarussion government over ethnic Poles in Belarus continues, and with all countries in the area outside of Russia declaring support for democracy, Polish activists are taking the issue up in a way that Elvis would be proud of. I’ll let the headline speak for itself, “Polish activists rock against Lukashenka.” 3 August 2005 (RFE/RL) — Young Poles want to use rock music to help Belarus’s pro-democracy opposition resist the regime of Belarusian President Aleksyandr Lukashenka. Pawel Stanczyk, head of Poland’s Association of Young Conservatives, says in Warsaw the association has launched a…
Kazakhstan is the most economically developed country in the region, yet after a series of colored revolutions in the former USSR, President Nazarbaev has begun to pay more attention to the activities of opposition groups and especially NGOs. The presidential election in 2006, therefore, is going to be an important milestone in judging the strength of Nazarbayev’s position. Nobody thought there would be a revolution in Kyrgyzstan, and neither did Akayev. Now, it seems as if President Bush has set this country in his sights for another possible success. He has written a letter to Nazerbayev urging him to take…
A writer at Kommersant thinks so, given the trend of events over the last half year or so, and he thinks Russia’s banning of ABC over its airing of an interview with Shamil Basayev is the freezing point. It is not surprising that Washington defended the TV company. The thing is that the Nightline program with Shamil Basaev happened at the right time when Russian-American relationship has reached the maximum freezing point. It is not hard to remind that the main problem between Russian and the United States appeared right after the Beslan events. Then President of Russia Vladimir Putin…
It looks like President Taya is out of luck today. He was out of the country attending King Fahd’s funeral in Saudi Arabia when the military decided they were going to take over! Good news? Bad news? Let’s see what all happened. Nouakchott, Mauritania – A group of army officers in Mauritania have overthrown President Maaoya Sid’Ahmed Taya in an apparently bloodless coup d’etat, announcing a military junta would rule the Islamic nation for up to two years. Taya, who himself seized power in a coup two decades ago, was out of the country at the time. arrived on Wednesday…
Venezuela’s fearless Rosalio Cardinal Castillo Lara has warned that Venezuela faces a bloodbath under dictator Hugo Chavez, and specifically cites the “unfortunate intervention” of former President Jimmy Carter. It’s about time. Carter has pretended for decades to be this pious man of peace, and feasted off his ‘Nobel laureate’ reputation while doing untold damage to democracies around the world. Because of Carter, North Korea’s monster regime is entrenched, the Iranian ayatollahs are firmly in place, Central America has endured ten years of war, Afghanistan got a communist invasion, the Soviets marched all over the world, and now Venezuela’s democracy has…
U.S. blogger Steven Vincent, whose book ‘In The Red Zone’ about Iraq, was kidnapped by Iraqi terrorists dressed as police in Basra and shot dead several times. His blog and his books were critical of terrorist infiltration into the Iraqi government, and were favorably reviewed. What an atrocity. What a damn shame. If you are not familiar with Steven Vincent, you can read about him here and here. UPDATE – with a hat tip to M: This recent essay about the sexiness of democracy in the Middle East is exquisite. What a terrible tragedy this writer’s death is! Don’t miss…
Eric Raymond has an interesting and well-reasoned piece up about our notion of Iraq’s recovery. His hypothesis is that as long as the Kurds want in, Iraq’s fine; if the Kurds see trouble, they’ll get out — and we’ll know. Makes sense to me. Definitely read the whole thing, for ESR’s typically lucid writing as well as for the rest of his thoughts. (Also, of course, the discussion in the comments thread.) UPDATE: Chrenkoff throws in some upward-looking opinion poll results.